Mr. 899

MEBANE — If you’ve bowled 11 strikes in a row and need that last strike for a perfect score, why not make that 12th roll your best?

That’s how AJ Van Fleet, a 26-year-old Haw River resident, approaches such games. It’s a mindset that has helped him throw several spotless 300 games and why he has more 300s in a bowling-centric career than 299s.

And maybe that’s how Van Fleet rolled back-to-back 300 games after a 299 on Monday night at Buffaloe Lanes Mebane, putting up a state-record set of 899 and elevating himself into a state of shock.

“It’s weird to think this, but I didn’t honestly have that idea in my head that I had just shot 899,” Van Fleet said Friday at the same location of his feat. “It was honestly surreal.”

Van Fleet’s final ball of his first game knocked down nine of 10 pins during the alley’s Monday Night Doubles League. The Williams High School graduate knew it was different from the first 11 balls thrown in that game — “I didn’t come around the ball to get enough side rotation,” he said.

Twenty-four throws followed. Twenty-four strikes.

“AJ shot 899. Eight-ninety nine,” said Bryan Collier, the general manager of Buffaloe Lanes Mebane who has known Van Fleet since he was a freshman at North Carolina State. “We went out and celebrated that night and even the next day I don’t think it really sunk in.”

Chris Mcswain of Gastonia previously held the state record for a set at 890. In the tight-knit bowling network that Van Fleet has been a part of since he competed in youth tournaments, he knows Mcswain personally and has even slept at his house.

“He’s one of the best bowlers I know,” Van Fleet said. “It’s humbling to be in the same category as him, shooting that well of a set.”

There have been 31 recorded sets of 900 in bowling history. Collier estimates all except perhaps three of those have come in the last 10-15 years, as bowlers have become more athletic, technology around crafting balls has improved and sports psychologists have entered the mix.

In North Carolina, nobody has been better than Van Fleet.

“I’ve had people ask me how it felt. I was just throwing a ball,” Van Fleet said. “And in some cases that’s honestly a better way to bowl. … It was just, ‘OK, let me just throw a ball.’ ”

Just throwing a ball is something Van Fleet has been doing for nearly his entire life. He has been told his first bowling trip was made when he was 18 months, when he pushed a ball down a ramp. By the time he was 4 or 5, Van Fleet was in leagues. It turned to competitive youth events before Van Fleet hit his teenage years, as he started averaging more than 200 pins per game when he was 12.

By the time he was 16, Van Fleet bowled his first 300. That came at another Buffaloe Lanes, this one in Cary, where Collier was the assistant manager.

That gave the pair something to joke about when they got to know each other two years later, when Collier was helping the N.C. State club bowling team that Van Fleet joined.

“I’ve known (Collier) since my freshman year of college, it’s been quite a while,” Van Fleet said in the food court area of Buffaloe Lanes Mebane, where he's a part-time employee. “I really enjoy working here, I really enjoy bowling here.”

The familiarity with Collier, the comfort that comes at his home lanes and his experience, there might have been signs pointing to a possible monster set that came to fruition with the 899.

That’s just not the case, Collier said.

“AJ was a really good bowler, had a lot of natural talent, but that’s something you really don’t expect. You don’t expect anybody to do it,” Collier said. “I don’t care how good you are, I don’t care how well you’re adapted to the center, to the lanes, to the oil pattern, you’ve got the right ball in your hands, you’re feeling good, you’re in the right spot.

“It’s just, you can throw good shots and not strike.”

Van Fleet admits to doing just that twice in his final game. Those two times, instead of the last ball of the first game that he didn’t get around, Van Fleet put too much spin on his 900 Global Honey Badger ball.

“The term for it is to Brooklyn, the opposite side of the head pin,” Van Fleet said of those rolls. “On those, all I thought was, ‘Well dang, I just … hopefully it’ll strike, but I don’t know. It’s going to hit the head pin somewhere.’ ”

They did, and all 10 pins dropped on the way to 899.

If you’re wondering, a bowler in pursuit of a 300 game isn’t always like a pitcher during a no-hitter. Van Fleet was bowling with his league partner, Gage Stiles, for the first time Monday night. Stiles asked during the second game if he should leave Van Fleet alone, to which Van Fleet said, “I don’t care if you come over and talk to me … as long as you’re not up on the approach with me talking, I’m fine.”

Multiple videos made it to Facebook of Van Fleet’s celebration upon his last strike. The most memorable of those he celebrated with was Artis Burnette Sr., the league coordinator at the lanes who has known Van Fleet since he was born. The first person to deliver a high-five was fellow bowler Steve Forsyth, who Van Fleet said he “always enjoys bowling with.”

Three nights after Van Fleet’s 899, Forsyth posed a reasonable question for anybody who reaches a mark never reached before in a state’s history.

Why hasn’t Van Fleet gone pro?

“If it happens, I wouldn’t complain. I know a lot of the pro guys out there, just growing up with them. But just speaking from a financial standpoint, it’s not unattainable, but I’d need to be at a more secure place financially than where I’m at,” Van Fleet said.

After graduating from N.C. State, Van Fleet pursued his masters in agricultural business management from North Carolina A&T, graduating from that program in early May. With student loans and a car payment to make, Van Fleet jokes that he doesn’t “want to end up on the wrong side of a loan shark.”

“I know I have the … mental and physical ability to go pro. It’s just, I don’t want to make a financial decision that will impact me over the long haul in a negative fashion,” Van Fleet said.

With Van Fleet entering the job market, he said without hesitation that once he established more of a financial footing, he’d explore the professional route deeper.

For now, he’ll be the state-record holder, with only one outcome that could unseat him.

“I took a picture and posted it on my personal Facebook page and it took off like wildfire. … It’s been wild, just to be able to experience it,” Van Fleet said of the fanfare. “I like a little bit, I don’t like a lot of attention. I like to be able to talk a little junk while bowling just with friends and stuff like that, mess with people while bowling, but not have everybody and their brother know me just when I walk into a bowling alley.”

Along the lines of talking junk, it figures Van Fleet has the ultimate line these days: Eight ninety-nine.

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